Review & Track Premiere: Apex Ten, Aashray
[Click play above to stream ‘Awakening’ by Apex Ten. Their new album, Aashray, is out Friday and available to order from Bandcamp.]
The higher-pitched-but-not-abrasive feedback/effects noise lures the listener into the beginning of “Awakening,” departing when the guitar, bass and drums enter. A sense of space and a ‘setting-out’ vibe are almost immediate on Aashray, Apex Ten‘s debut album — that’s counting 2021’s First Session as a full-length demo; stay with me I’ll get there — as the Liège, Belgium, trio of bassist/vocalist Brad Masaya (also synth, theremin, guitar, tambourine), guitarist Benoît Velez (also theremin, lap steel, chime, tambourine) and drummer/percussionist Alexis Radelet (also güiro, tambourine) begin to dig into the seven-track/41-minute procession. An intention toward audience hypnosis is made clear by the bassline and the contemplative, earlier My Sleeping Karma-style rolling exploration that surrounds it, though the additional crunch in the fuzz that emerges late is harder-landing.
Quick in contrast, the subsequent “Unlock” feels based around the movement of the drums, a steady kick pushing the four-minute track through its winding cosmic course, the bass doing well to keep up with tonal warmth beneath the airier guitar. Vocals arrive after three minutes in, not like an afterthought, but obviously not the priority either, and the effect would be jarring had the band not been so outright immersive already in their heavy psych meditation. But the vocal melody — echoing, not so unlike Elder, but not just that either — is a distinguishing feature and one almost expects a verse to turnaround quickly in “Dazed,” which it doesn’t, as Apex Ten show both patience and a willingness to dive into texture and atmosphere more than separate jams and more structured ‘songs.’ It’s to be vibe, then. Fortunately, they make it thick, rounding their way into a low-end fuzz wash in the second half of “Dazed,” not losing themselves in it even as they seem to completely submerge as Masaya and Radelet hold to the core progression under the canopy of effects.
That march cuts and gives over to the drone and Tibetan bowl (contributed by Thomas Mouton) at the outset of “Naga,” the centerpiece of the tracklisting and a presumed side A closer on some future vinyl edition. If the percussion, bowl, synth, guitar and bass jam isn’t improvised, it sounds it, with the drums on the room mics deeper in the mix a solidifying presence as the inward delve continues. At about four minutes into the 6:50, the drums begin to lead more of a march with the hi-hat and toms keeping pace as the guitar noodles out over the established drone, a kind of ethereal blues taking hold that departs with a decisive strike of the crash and leaves one more swell of the bowl behind before ending. Low fuzz begins “Deaf Snake” with a more straightforward nod punctuated by the drums as side B unfolds, the core of the piece dirtier, riffier, trading back and forth in volume and impact, raucous, then receding.
But even “Deaf Snake” argues in favor of Aashray as being Apex Ten‘s first album, with a fullness of sound in its heavier parts that First Session was too raw to dig into. Wouldn’t be the first time in history a band figured out something about their sound between their debut and sophomore LPs — that’s an expected part of the process for most acts — but a ‘session’ is something different than making an album even if Aashray was recorded in a single day on Dec. 30, 2021, with production by Simon Lambert (who also adds Moog, chime and effects along with mixing and mastering) and Laurent Eyen at Koko Studio. “Deaf Snake,” which is as riff-led as Apex Ten get here, is more engrossing as it pushes into its final payoff, and that’s a distinguishing factor to coincide with all the atmospheric jamming and apparent improvisation or at least semi-planned parts.
The penultimate “Brahma” is the shortest of the cuts at 3:27 and finds the vocals returning — the lyrics: something about monsters waiting outside switching faces, something about drowning in space — after a pointed solo and headed into a heavy psych roll that reminds of Sungrazer playing off Colour Haze influence, but it comes apart quickly and gives over to silence ahead of 10-minute closer “Godavari.” The finale takes its name from a river in India, and while I don’t know if Apex Ten are travelers or just daydreaming, the first two minutes echo “Awakening” in their drone, but the spirit is warmer and more subdued as the guitar enters sweet and with still-developing patience the song begins to unfold, drums feeling their way in along with the rhythm in the initial buildup. They get where they’re going before four minutes in, moving perhaps a little faster than the song wants to go, but not egregiously so as they weave through a kind of riff-henge, working around heavy riffing with wah laced after a quick inhale circa six minutes, the bassline at the core of the piece almost in its own world, righteously.
“Godavari” emphasizes and finds its crux in the jam, but there’s linearity as well as they rear back before pushing into the harder fuzz that is the last crescendo, the guitar departing for a solo as the drums and bass keep the plot moving forward. If they were all playing at the same time in the studio, I don’t know who was giving the head signal — maybe Masaya — to bring it down, but they meet back up at the end and draw Aashray‘s last stretch to a relatively quick stop; a cymbal wash and some residual amplifier hum, a swell of synth the last element to go. There’s symmetry of purpose to the finish as well as to the start — Apex Ten sound aware of the genre in which they reside, and that’s to their benefit here — but the personality of the band is found more in the journey than either endpoint, whether that’s the limited use of vocals that seems to be reserving that spot for later development or the extrapolation from a classic power trio dynamic that allows the guitar to meander while the rhythm section moves forward and awaits its eventual return.
None of this will be strange to those with experience in mellow, meditative or progressive-tinged heavy psych, but Apex Ten demonstrate fluidity throughout Aashray — the word translated from Hindi as ‘shelter’ or ‘refuge’ — and the album lives up to the name it’s been given in creating a three-dimensional aural sphere to inhabit, like a biodome of fuzz, world-building. As to what or whom the band will become over time, given the jump in complexity between First Session and Aashray, it seems silly to speculate, but there’s room for them to continue to explore their meld of structure and spontaneous seeking, and in listening, one hopes the next time they decide to spend a day in the studio the results are as rich and engaging as they are here. And if you want to call it their second record, fine. It still feels like they’re just getting started.
Tags: Aashray, Apex Ten, Apex Ten Aashray, Belgium, Liège, Unsigned bands
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